A diabetic metabolism is widely considered to accelerate aging, on the basis of very good evidence, and to the point at which researchers have often used diabetic mice as a faster, cheaper stand-in for aged mice in their studies. Reasonably, one should expect any decent measure of biological age to report accelerated biological aging in diabetic animals or people. Indeed, that is what is shown here for two of the commonly used aging clocks developed in recent years. This is one of the many yardsticks that an aging clock should be able to meet in order to give confidence that it reflects biological age sufficiently well to be broadly useful.
Insulin resistance (IR) has been reported to be associated with aging; however, few studies have investigated the relationship between IR and biological age. The Triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index is a recognized marker of IR. We conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), including 12,074 adults (aged 20 and older) from the 2001-2010 and 2015-2018 cycles. Comprehensive TyG and biological age data were extracted for analysis.
We included 12,074 participants with a mean age of 46.91 years; of these, 50.25% were female and 49.75% were male. Each 1-unit increase in the TyG index was associated with a 1.64-year rise in Klemera-Doubal method (KDM) biological age and a 117% higher risk of accelerated aging. Similarly, each 1-unit increase in the TyG index corresponded to a 0.40-year increase in phenotypic age, resulting in a 15% higher risk of accelerated aging. The analysis also revealed nonlinear positive relationships between the TyG index and biological aging, particularly for KDM biological age and phenotypic age, with a turning point at 8.66. Across all subgroups, the TyG index consistently showed a positive correlation with biological aging, even in the presence of significant interactions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12933-025-02631-w
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